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7 Responses

Since you are using Google's properties, this exercise should focus on Google's realm of influence. By pointing back to the Google Plus page, you are re-enforcing the value of the +1's that you get on your site to Google.

This will help build the brand and create trust in Google, which in turn will impact all your overall search efforts.

I tend to think it will work the other way round - Google wants to use +1 as an in-house popularity contest basically (from what I can tell they've taken the concept of other social bookmarking sites and optimized them for their own purposes in an environment that they have complete access to and control over).

I'd say point the +1's at the property you want to rank (your site, most likely). I could be wrong, but I imagine this would be more in line with what they intend the use of +1 to be (sharing, recommending and endorsing content, not profiles).

That being said, I don't really think Google+ is set to be the massive thing everybody makes it out to be. Google is pushing it hard for sure, but they haven't got me (or basically anybody I know) convinced that the world needs another sharing platform like this - there's already so many well-established ones out there (Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter). People only need so many ways to say, "Hey, check this out.", and the market is already quite competitive.

Clancy, I kinda thought like you but then, why do big brands send it to their Google+ page and not to their site? For example seomoz seems to send their +1s to their Google+ page so I guess they do it becuase they think it's better for SEO right?

My guess is that these brands are looking at it more from a perspective of getting people to follow their +1 accounts so they can use them as a promotional tool, more than looking at it from an SEO perspective, but I could be wrong.

Brad RussellBusiness owner of Australia's largest Isagenix website. at IsaTonic

Apr 19, 2012

Hi Lisa,

From what I understand of your question, you're trying to figure out the structure of placing Google +1 buttons and Google follow buttons on your site?

If you go to our domain, http://www.kitchenwaredirect.com.au, you will see that we have a G+1 button in the header. When a user clicks on this, it +1's whatever page they are on (homepage, a brand landing page etc). If you go to any of our products, in addition to the +1 button in the header, there is also a +1 button on the item template to encourage more +1's of individual products. Towards the bottom of the description on our item template, there is a large follow button.

The reason for this is much like the Facebook Like button in that it influences peers. If somebody is following you on Google+ and you +1 a page then that page is given a boost when it is showing up on that persons SERP.

For example, imagine A follows B on Google+ and B +1's the URL awesomeurl.com. Before, if A searches for "an awesome URL" awesomeurl.com may be 7th on the SERP. After B +1's the URL, awesomeurl.com could be 2nd on the SERP for A.

At the moment it is definitely affecting SEO when you are signed into your Google+ account through search plus your world. It is hard to say how much it is effecting SEO for the general searcher who is not signed in.

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